Small Comforts
by wade bram wilson
Summary: Even with Hawke gone, he would always ache for her. Anders is lovesick, but he is also lonely. Lirene knows this. She only wanted to comfort him. She never meant to fall in love. Anders/Lirene, a hopeless and useless unrequited love, but neither of them wants to be alone in their despair.


"What are you writing?"

She is lying on her stomach across the cot in his clinic, feeling exposed and vulnerable in her nightdress, but she props her arms up beneath her chin as she watches him work. Maybe if he looks at her again he might really see her this time.

Anders frowns but doesn't glance up from his papers, his quill scratches on seamlessly. He is so full of thoughts that he must capture them before they escape, and when he listens he wants to do it with his whole mind. A minute passes and Lirene hears the pattern of his words change. He crosses a mistake, the furrowed lines so familiar on his brow that she wonders how old he really is. He dots the end of a sentence before turning to her.

"Do you have to ask?" He says. The words rasp from chapped lips, but there is no scorn in his voice, only exasperation and a hint of a plea. This is worn ground that they are treading. Bare and barren.

"Will you ever let me read them?"

He runs pale fingers through the loose edges of his hair, creeping back from his hairline, trying to keep the tangles from his eyes. His hands are like spiders, thin and concealed in dirtier-than-it-should-be blonde. His response is the same as it always is.

"You know I can't."

"…But you've never said why."

His breath comes in a ragged exhale. Long fingers pushing through the mess of parchment now, the ink stains blossom like bruises on his fingertips, up his wrists. There is ink on his lips too, she thinks that he can probably taste it.

"There's too much of… _me_," he tries to explain, but he can only put his hands in the mess of papers and hours and hours of work, and look at her with his empty eyes. The gesture is enough. She knows what he means. She knew when they started… whatever this thing between them was.

He is those papers, he is his work and his cause and the intricate thoughts and feelings and pain that mark the inside of his head, more permanent than the ink stains on his pale skin, permanent like the raised scars that cross over one another on his shoulders, turning the skin there into a thatched canvas of fibrous webbing. Anders is marked by all of it, corroded, withered and consumed.

Sometimes she sees a shadow –or a light rather– of the man that he used to be, or the man that he might have become, if he had been given the chance. But this other man comes only in fleeting smiles, in jokes that she sees him regret the moment they leave his lips, rare moments of passion but only those that are not also points of loss.

She watches him unravel every day. He is frayed. Every new wound is a cut on his restraints, removing them little by little. He has stopped caring about a lot of things now, she wonders if he ever cared about himself, about her.

But he is different when Hawke is here. Lirene had only been in the clinic twice when the other woman had come to visit, as she still did sometimes, even now that the two of them were separated by so much difference.

When _she_ visits, Anders lights up. He takes in all of Hawke's light, clean and strong light, not tainted by loss and emptiness as theirs is. Hawke is a beacon and she is but a candle, fluttering as Anders' weather shifts and peaks around her.

Lirene hates him for it sometimes. Hates the way Anders looks when she is around, perpetually apologetic for his lifestyle, for his shabby clothing and hair, for his devotions and his scattered words. She hates the way he looks ashamed and embarrassed, hates that some of that shame must be because of her.

Most of all, she hates it that when Hawke visits, Anders will eat, he will comb his hair and wash the dried blood from his coat sleeves, he makes an effort to speak and smile. He is more present, more of that other man. She hates that each time Hawke comes – just to check up, just to see how he is doing, how the clinic is, to share news– Anders pulls himself together just long enough for her to see him and when she leaves he breaks anew.

Anders still loves Hawke, he always will. Lirene knew that from the start, she just didn't realise that she would fall so easily in love with him.

She pulls herself up onto her elbows and tucks her feet beneath her, rising and padding barefoot over to the writing desk where he is hunched over, knowing she doesn't look young or beautiful, knowing he can never love her.

He is so like a caged bird with his feathers ruffled. He tenses when she touches her hand to the skin on his neck, so smooth and exposed, and turns his face up to hers. Their eyes meet and he sighs; a dulled honey colour rimmed in sleepless red, a sigh full of pain and self-loathing.

She pulls him to her, and he rests his cheek against her breast. Her fingers run through his hair, carefully combing out the knots like she remembers doing for her daughter before the blight.

His arms clutch around her waist, fingers gentle, but he shudders against her.  
"I'm sorry," he breathes.

He is tired, as is she. But they go on, as is in their natures. There is always more to do, more people who need saving, more to fight for and fight against.

They both have so much loss and hurt inside of them that there is little room for happiness. She tells herself there is no need for it. That you have to have some love for yourself before you can give that to another person. You have to have some trust to beat another's heart and blood. You have to let go of the past before you can build a future.

At least they can take comfort in one another for now.

Sometimes, all you need, and all you can have, is another person to care about you and hold you, without needing to ask who you were or what you've done, why you cry or why you fight. That is what they are for one another, that is all that they can be.

Their paths are dark enough without being shrouded in loneliness.


End file.
